There has always been no shortage of topics in the "rolling around" automobile circle, and various new technologies and new terms have dazzled people, but there are very few who can really achieve "words and deeds". In the midst of the hustle and bustle, rather than running around all day long, those companies that are quiet and practical may be the most noteworthy.
For example, DJI. In the eyes of the general public, DJI is the undoubted "king" of the drone market. But in fact, DJI has already begun to get involved in automotive intelligent driving technology and has made small achievements in the industry. If you use a few words to describe DJI's current achievements in the field of intelligent driving, it can be "low-key" and "gorgeous".
It is rare to see it "shouting hard" on the market, and even the person in charge, Shen Shaojie, was interviewed by the media for the first time at the 2024 Electric Vehicle 100 People Conference that ended not long ago. The product is even more cost-effective, and the 7 V + 100 TOPS scheme can be piloted in cities that can be opened nationwide without a map, and the cost is only 7,000 yuan. Shen Shaojie said: DJI's in-vehicle purpose is to achieve equal rights in science and technology, so that all models are equipped with intelligent driving as standard.
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The romance of science and engineering men: let all models be equipped with intelligent driving as standard
For science and engineering men, doing is more valuable than talking. "DJI's style is to either don't say it, and when you say it, it's time to make it. DJI's mission is to provide a safe and easy travel experience for everyone. Shen Shaojie said in an interview with the bus terminal network.
The "everyone" here refers to the fact that intelligent driving should be adapted to all models, that is, low-end and high-end car series, new energy and fuel models.
A closer look at the cars on the current market is not difficult to find that intelligent driving technology, especially high-end intelligent driving technology, is generally suitable for more than 300,000 high-end new energy models. To this end, Shen Shaojie listed some specific data:
From 2021 to 2023, the configuration of high-end intelligent driving of more than 300,000 new energy vehicles is very high, and the high-end + low-end is close to 100%. For cars below 200,000 yuan, the configuration rate of high-end intelligent driving is close to 0, and the models in the price range of 8-200,000 yuan account for 74%. At the same time, no matter what the price of fuel vehicles, the configuration rate of high-end intelligent driving is close to 0.
This also shows that at a time when users have slowly accepted intelligent driving, the popularity of high-end intelligent driving technology is indeed unable to meet market demand. Therefore, DJI first aimed at this gap, starting from the low-end and fuel vehicle markets, and began to popularize high-end intelligent driving.
At present, including the Yunduo Lingxi Edition, iCAR03, and Yueye Plus are equipped with DJI 7V+32TOPS, and more than 20 models equipped with DJI in-vehicle systems will be launched in 2024, including the first fuel model - SAIC Volkswagen Tiguan L Pro.
In just a few years since its establishment, DJI's achievements are indeed "a thunder on the ground", which makes people have to be impressed.
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Refusing to "draw cakes", high-end intelligent driving focuses on high cost performance
Equipping all models with smart driving as standard is easier said than done. One of the most critical and impossible to ignore is cost. This is also the main reason why most of the current intelligent driving technology is used in high-level models with more than 300,000 yuan.
In order to solve the problem of high price, DJI Automotive chose to take the cost-effective route, and last year released a systematic intelligent driving solution "Chengxing Platform", which is divided into two configurations: 7V+32TOPS and 9V+80TOPS.
"The so-called '7V' is a pair of 8 million pixel inertial navigation binocular with front view, plus a 3 million pixel monocular with rear view, plus 4 3 million pixel surround view, a total of 7 cameras; Shen Shaojie explained.
It is not difficult to see that in the Chengxing platform, DJI chooses a pure visual solution, which does not require relatively expensive hardware such as lidar and millimeter-wave radar, nor does it need high-precision maps, so it can save a lot of costs. According to Shen Shaojie, the overall cost of the entire "7V+32TOPS" is about 5,000, and the standard configuration of 8-150,000 level models will be slowly realized from this year.
On the basis of last year, at this year's 100-person meeting, Shen Shaojie introduced the latest generation of Chengxing platform: 7V+32TOPS, 7V+100TOPS and 10V+100TOPS three configuration schemes.
The minimum configuration is still 7V+32TOPS configuration, which can realize high-end intelligent assisted driving functions such as urban memory pilot, high-speed pilot, and cross-layer memory parking.
The "7V+32TOPS" solution only needs to increase the computing power to 100TOPS, and can be upgraded to the city navigation function without changing the original sensor configuration. The important role of this move is to bring the hardware BOM cost of the city pilot to the level of 7,000 yuan.
The "10V+100TOPS" high-configuration solution is based on the configuration of 10 cameras with the same computing power, and a telephoto camera in the front can handle traffic light detection at large intersections, making the system respond more smoothly.
In addition, DJI's automotive selection and engineering landing of intelligent driving chips are also quite distinctive, it bypasses mainstream chips such as Horizon and NVIDIA, and develops algorithms based on TI and Qualcomm, etc., and the main focus is also cost-effective, and basically achieves the first in the industry.
It can be seen that the current price publicly released by DJI has met the cost-effective conditions it proposes, but some professionals believe that compared with the current real all-in-one solution, the price of the DJI 7V solution is still too high. How to further stimulate the advantages of cost performance may be the key to DJI's next step to occupy the market.
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"Fight from the bottom up", stabilize the basic market and then "rush up"
Judging from the platforms currently released by DJI, it is mainly purely visual. Perhaps in the eyes of most people, the purely visual route is not as reliable as the lidar route.
However, in the interview, Shen Shaojie mentioned that the limitations of the pure visual system are not as great as imagined, and the weather vision of rain and fog can also be handled well. Especially in the stereoscopic binocular configuration, even if the front image is not too good, as long as the point cloud can come out and the depth can come out, a lot of safety can be done.
At the same time, DJI is not averse to lidar. At the 100-person meeting, DJI Automotive also brought an inertial navigation trinocular and lidar assembly, which is internally nicknamed "Exciting Eyes", which is a sensor solution for heterogeneous redundant domain control of L3 autonomous driving in the future.
According to the official statement, thanks to the accurate ranging ability of LiDAR and the robustness to illumination, the "Eye-Catching" scheme can further enhance the sense of safety and comfort of the intelligent driving system in scenarios such as close-range congestion, complex traffic flow and VRU in urban areas, VRU and obstacle avoidance.
It can be seen that on the way to more advanced intelligent driving, DJI still chose to introduce lidar. Even so, DJI's original intention of being cost-effective was not entirely unrealizable. According to Shen Shaojie, compared with the current common "lidar + forward camera" scheme on the market, it can achieve 100% performance and function substitution under the premise of reducing the cost by 30%~40%.
At this point, DJI's intelligent driving route has gradually become clear: 7V, 10V and other solutions based on the pure visual route have gradually promoted the application of high-end intelligent driving in models in the 8-200,000 range, supplemented by LiDAR technology, to move towards higher-level intelligent driving, so as to adapt to high-end models.
"DJI Automotive hopes to 'play from the bottom up', that is, to meet the low-end market with basic functions, and then develop products with better experience to meet the needs of the high-end market. Shen Shaojie said: "After the basic disk is stabilized, DJI will continue to try more powerful technologies and products." ”
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It can be seen that on the road to a higher level of intelligent driving, DJI will inevitably confront Huawei, the current "leader" in the market, and the "fierce battle" between the two sides may also be inevitable.
Although DJI's cost-effective products have achieved a certain advantage in public opinion, the market is the ultimate testing ground after all, and who will come out on top can only rely on their own abilities